Exile Vilify
by PortalPanda
Summary: What if Chell gave up? A Chellmann oneshot based on the song Exile Vilify by The National. Rated T for darkness and caution. Cover art by inkatt on DeviantArt.


_Exile_

 _It takes your mind again_

They were together in that they were both alone.

She was trapped in a blindingly bright labyrinth of tests while Doug was condemned to the darker underside of Aperture.

They were separated by walls thick with panels and cameras and wires, but when it came right down to it they spent most of their time in Aperture only feet apart.

Doug found that simultaneously agonizing and comforting.

She was so close. She thought that she was alone here, alone with Her, but he was always there for her. Always walking alongside her through every test, biting his nails at her struggles and silently celebrating her victories.

She would never know.

Most days Doug was proud to walk beside her despite the shadows, but there were some days when he lost himself to the darkness and she was all that could save him. She was so strong that when she stood on the other side of the wall he could feel her presence as if she were standing next to him. She radiated calm, and hope, and light that chased the shadows away.

His angel.

Doug wished he could tell her how much she meant to him. How highly he thought of her. How amazing she was. He wished she knew.

He didn't know how badly she really needed it until it was too late.

 _You've got suckers luck_

 _Have you given up?_

Chell was alone. Isolated in this blinding white prison, doomed to be tortured and taunted for the rest of her existence for the second time now.

The first time around she had had something to fight for. She had wanted freedom, and she had believed that killing Her would earn her that freedom. But now she had done all of this before. She had successfully completed the impossible task of dethroning a god, only to be rewarded with a fleeting glimpse of the freedom she had worked so hard for, and it was not promising.

There was nothing.

There were no people anywhere. No cars, no color, no movement to the scene. She was more alone on the surface than she had ever been in Aperture.

Everything she had fought for was for nothing.

Now she was in the same situation she had been in before; the difference was that this time she knew what lay on the other side. She knew that there was no winning move: it was die down here or die up there.

The one thing she knew for certain was that she would be alone either way.

 _Does it feel like a trial?_

 _Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?_

Doug was worried about her.

He had a much easier time keeping pace with her now than he had during her first trip through Aperture. Before he had had to race alongside her behind the walls in a failing attempt to keep up, but now she seemed tired and slow.

Something was wrong.

He carefully pried at the panels to leave himself enough space to see her, and what he saw only made him worry more: his angel looked dull and wilted, like a flower deprived of sunlight.

Doug had always believed that she was a force of nature. She was always moving forward, gracefully, effortlessly, her reactions as swift as waves rolling forth in the sea. She never looked back. She never went back. And she never ever stopped.

He tried to reassure himself of these things as her graceful stride nearly came to a halt. He bit his lip and looked away.

Of course he had noticed the changes in her behavior.

On her first trip through Aperture she had been absolutely bullet proof. She had knocked every camera off the walls, deactivated every turret, and blown Her to smithereens.

This time was different.

Now she did what she had to do to make it through the tests, but she never did anything more. She did the bare minimum.

But he never thought that anything was wrong; not like this.

Her eyes turned a duller shade of grey as she surveyed the test chamber. This one was equipped with a laser pointing down from the ceiling. Turrets were stationed throughout the chamber, each one placed behind a pane of a glass. However, the laser didn't go through this glass like it had in the other chambers. Chell would have to destroy the turrets by pointing the laser through her portals without being shot.

Time slowed as she moved toward the edge of the pane and everything went horribly wrong.

 _Oh, you meant so much_

Doug wanted to believe that she made a mistake.

He wanted so badly to believe that for just one moment the angel's wings had faltered that she tripped and stumbled out too far to the side of the pane. He wanted to believe that she dropped the gun out of shock after the turrets had found her.

 _Have you given up?_

But that wasn't what he saw.

Proud and graceful as ever, she took one single step out from the pane and allowed the gun to slip from her grasp. A split second later a trio of crimson eyes locked onto her and the chamber was filled with gunfire.

And he watched, mortified, as she fell.

 _Does it feel like a trial?_

Chell hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Her vision was blurred, she couldn't move, she couldn't see, she couldn't breathe, but she could hear something behind her, some awful mechanical groan like the walls were tearing themselves apart.

 _Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?_

Doug was tearing the walls apart with nothing but a companion cube and his bare hands. He was not intentionally doing this, in all honesty he was far too shocked to move, but some part of him had seen her fall and instinctively sprang into action faster than a test subject on propulsion gel. Soon he managed to free one of the panels from the wall, and she spotted him instantly.

Their eyes met. His were wild and panicked, flickering back and forth from her face to the red patch on her side that was growing with every second. Hers had been dull for days now but they brightened immeasurably at the sight of him, that beautiful spark of tenacity reigniting for a split second before sputtering out of existence once again.

The sheer emotion of seeing him hit her harder than the pain.

She had never been alone.

Doug had been there with her all along. The murals, the directions, the food: all the things that had been so effortlessly given to her during her treks through Aperture had been granted by him. He had protected her. He had never left her to die here alone.

The gravity of the situation hit her as she looked up at him again.

He wanted so badly to help her. He was almost sticking out from the wall, poised to spring like a cat at any moment to stanch her up from the floor of the test chamber and save her.

But she didn't want him to.

She wanted this. And she knew that he had been so busy taking care of her that he had never tried to leave. He had stopped taking care of himself.

Her survival meant his death.

 _Does it feel like a trial?_

Seeing how thoroughly broken she looked shocked Doug into stillness for a moment. He could all but see the light draining out of her, the grey of her eyes getting duller by the second.

He had to help her before it was too late.

He gave the panels one last tug, widening the aperture a little farther before he sprang out behind the wall.

In his panic he forgot about the turrets.

 _Oh, you're thinking too fast_

 _You're like marbles on glass_

They found him instantaneously, just as they had found her, the difference was that he scrambled back into his hole in the wall before they could shoot him.

For a moment she thought that he had actually gotten himself killed in an attempt to help her. She heard the gunfire but she couldn't see. She tried desperately to move, to make sure he was safe, but in her current state it was virtually impossible. Every microscopic movement she made cost her blood and agony. Finally he came back into her line of sight and she collapsed on the floor once again.

Her crystal grey eyes were glinting with tears as she looked up at him. She looked so desperate and sad that for a moment he thought she was hurt that he hadn't already come to help her, so he started to go to her again until she stopped him.

 _Vilify_

 _Don't even try_

She knew that if he saved her he would very likely get himself killed in the process. She didn't want to be the one that escaped this time.

The look in her eyes was as sad as ever, but now she gave him a wavering, heartbroken smile and shook her head.

 _Vilify_

 _Don't even try_

He could see what was happening but he was too shocked to move.

And she knew that she would leave him here so she gave him her last breath, her first and last words, thin and soft as unraveling thread but full of wavering emotion.

"Don't." She whispered desperately as she smiled and shook her head.

 _Vilify..._

And then he really was alone.


End file.
